News-Record.com

SO EXCITING! Joss Whedon already has a seven-episode commitment from Fox for "Dollhouse" (let's hope they don't cancel it soon after that a la Firefly), which will star Eliza Dushku, (Faith on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Tru in "Tru Calling").

Here's how Fox describes the series:

"Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse."

It sounds a bit like River from "Firefly" meets "Total Recall" meets "Alias." And I can't wait! Let's just hope the writers' strike doesn't postpone it too long!

Well, the Hollywood writer's strike is in full effect.

Sure, Jay and Dave's late night shows are now in reruns -- but I didn't watch them anyway, and this is all fascinating to me. I'm very interested to see how everyone's reacting to it.

According to the AP Jay Leno rode up to a line of writers picketing outside NBC to deliver them donuts and show his support.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the cast of her show, The New Adventures of Old Christine, were picketing alongside striking writers outside Warner Bros. on Monday. Dreyfus is married to a writer.

30 Rock's Tina Fey has been picketing in New York in November -- the L.A. Times caught up with her on the line.

Brian K. Vaughan, one of my favorite comics writers and now a writer and producer on Lost, talks about the strike on his MySpace blog, saying:

A few months ago, I was thrilled to start my second season as a writer and now a co-producer over at LOST, and have been unbelievably fortunate enough to help write a few scripts for what I think could end up being the show's best season.

And much as it breaks my heart for my colleagues and I to have to walk away from a job we love, we all think it's vitally important to the future of our industry.

Judd Apatow, director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, agrees, explaining the grievance over writers not being paid for residuals aired in new media formats:

"Here's how I would explain it: If you're a teamster, you get paid to drive a truck. But if someone invents a new kind of truck, and you're still driving it, you should still get paid."

The Smoking Gun is reporting that Transformers (and upcoming Indiana Jones movie) star Shai LeBeouf was arrested in Chicago after drunkenly refusing to leave a Walgreens pharmacy at 2:30 a.m.

As mug shots go, his is not a bad one:

You've got to worry about this kid, though. Directors like Stephen Spielberg think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread and he's still acting like an idiot. I was sort of annoyed when he leaked the name of the new Indiana Jones flick at the MTV awards, saying he did it because: "I'm 21 and we're in Vegas, baby!"

Not as annoyed as Spielberg was, but annoyed.

Now he's getting busted for being drunk in a pharmacy? Talk about amateur -- at least be found drunk in your neighbor's bed, wander into an airport completely naked, something good.

All right -- this is why I love YouTube.

This is from the pilot of "Graffiti Rock" -- a show that was supposed to become the Hip Hop American Bandstand or Soul Train.

It wasn't picked up -- but this clip has Run DMC from 1984.

Special extra: A young Vincent Gallo (of Brown Bunny infamy) makes a cameo at the beginning, introducing himself as "Prince Vince" and Kool Moe Dee and Special K from th Treacherous Three show up to battle at the end of the clip.

Two things occurred to me today when, in my car, I heard Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood":

1) Like a lot of Billy Joel's songs, I have no idea what the hell this one is about, really. Someone's leaving Hollywood. They should, therefore, say goodbye. My baby.

2) Is there any recording artist who recorded more depressing songs over the course of his career without really leaving the impression that his music is depressing?

I mean, really -- take a look at Billy Joel's catalog. Some of the up numbers jump out at you -- even the up numbers ("Uptown Girl," for instance) are, upon closer inspection, pretty depressing.
Even his Greatest Hits album (which is, by definition, the songs that would have the greatest commercial appeal) is, for anyone who's paying attention, sort of a list of reasons to try to off yourself or check into a clinic (both of which Joel had some experience with early in life).

Well, new Bond Daniel Craig has signed on for four more Bond movies. That would make him Bond for one more movie than his predecessor, Pierce Brosnan (who made four Bond flicks) but wouldn't equal Sean Connery (six) or Roger Moore (seven).

I'm a die-hard Bond fan, love the books and the movies. I was very skeptical about Craig -- but he won me over with the excellent Casino Royale.

If I'm forced to choose I have to go with Connery as the best Bond -- but because the first Brosnan was the first Bond I ever saw on the big screen I feel like he'll always be my generation's Bond. Timothy Dalton was the first Bond I ever saw (on video, in License to Kill) -- and I thought he was good, but he didn't have the scripts and his second (and last) Bond movie was no good.

Roger Moore -- I really consider his entire tenure a sort of embarrassment and find it hard to believe that anyone was ever coked up enough to buy him as Bond.

So IESB has some blurry photos of Zachary Quinto as Spock in the new JJ Abrams flick. There's video, too.

Also, it's not been verified, but details of the plot are leaking, and it sounds pretty cool. Click here for spoilers if you want to know what may or may not be true.

Blimey!

Check out this flashlight in the form of the Sonic Screwdriver device from the long running BBC science fiction show Doctor Who.

And it's just $13.

Here's a clip of The Doctor with his favorite tool:

And here's a video review of the actual flashlight (or torch, for you anglophiles):

Well, it's Web Junkie Wednesday again -- and in this week's edition I want to talk about online juke boxes. You know, those free online tune repositories that keep you singing through your workday (and distract you from any actual work as you search their catalogs).

My personal favorite right now is Soundpedia, an online collection of music, videos and community features that allows you to listen to an astonishing number of songs and full length albums in their entirety -- and even shows you the lyrics as the songs are playing.

Great story from Salon.com about J.K. Rowling suing a fan who's putting together a Harry Potter reference book.

The type of book that's being discussed is clearly a reference work -- the type we all used when trying to write term papers on the work of authors like Ernest Hemingway, Proust or William Faulkner. Rowling's suggestion that this is someone profiting off of her work not only demonstrates a startling misunderstanding of Fair Use but also comes off as fairly ridiculous from a woman who's made more money off a children's book series than any modern author.

From the story, about the book springing from a popular fan web site:

["The Harry Potter Lexicon] is a comprehensive reference work covering all that happens in J.K. Rowling's series -- to quote its Wikipedia entry (everything related to Potter is on WP), the Lexicon lists "characters, places, creatures, spells, potions and magical devices," and it introduced one of the first timelines of all events that occur in the Harry Potter universe.

Thanks to such acclaim, Vander Ark recently landed a publishing contract with RDR Books to put out a printed version of the online lexicon. His book was to have gone on sale this fall."

That Rowling herself found it a great scholarly resource but objects to the author being paid for print copies that display his work in creating it is really galling.

I've been making an effort to listen to more new music lately. I'm afraid of becoming one of those people who listen to the same dozen albums over and over again for the rest of their lives without taking in anything new. Not preemptively -- I began recognizing the symptoms and rushed to treat them.

So here's some of the new stuff I'm listening to. How about you?

This YouTube clip, created by one of The Daily Show's 14 writers, is for my mom.

She's been missing her Jon Stewart fix since the writer's strike began. It is a pretty funny look at the strike and the CEOs who sue over Internet content and say on the record it's worth billions but then tell the Writer's Guild that there's no way to figure out what online content is worth.

This week at Culture Shock we had it all - Wizards, Vulcans, new CDs, Internet Jukeboxes and even the Piano Man. So what have we learned?

* Goth and emo kids buying up the back catalogs of The Cure, The Smiths and Joy Division could get all the misery plus actual catchy hooks with...wait for it...Billy Joel! No, really. Hot funk, cool punk, doomed romances and midlife crises -- it's still rock and roll to him!

(Admit it -- this shot of Billy from his The Stranger album is as goth as the sleeve of any Joy Division LP)

* J.K. Rowling doesn't need magic to make fair use of her characters for scholarly works disappear. She has lawyers!

(Rowling is seen here asking an excited fan: "You're thinking of writing about my books right now aren't you? Aren't you?! Damn right you're not. Now is that John with an 'h' or...?")

* Star Trek fanatics + new movie + Internet = Spoilerific!

* We're getting more Daniel Craig as Bond! Well..not more Daniel Craig. After the obscenely small swimming trunk thingies in Casino Royale, that'd be kind of difficult, frankly. But we're getting him in four more Bond movies!

(This bastard is 39 years old. He must live on wheat grass smoothies, bench presses and 19-year-old supermodels. A picture like this does make you wonder, though -- is he hairy enough to be Bond? Sean Connery is quite a pelt to follow.)

* When media companies are suing you for stealing their content online, the content is worth billions of dollars. When they're arguing with striking writers about what they should be paid for that content's online use, it's not clear it's worth anything. Sounds like a daily show segment to me -- or, you know, it would have been but for the strike.

That's but a sampling of the wisdom we've imparted this week. I'll be gone for the first part of next week, but will catch you guys back here before Thanksgiving for some special online holiday goodness. Enjoy the tryptophan!

Confession: I was a pretty big Morrissey fan in high school. Not nearly as big as my friend Brian LaRue, who introduced me to Moz. But pretty big. Still, I never saw this video for "November Spawned a Monster" -- in which Morrissey, decked out in a mesh shirt and dancing like a gay club kid who's had maybe one more interpretive dance class than he has cosmos, rolls around and gyrates and generally looks sad out in the middle of a desert. As we're coming into November's homestretch, I thought I might present this to you guys before taking a few days off:

Man, that's monstrously strange.

But I do still love the line: "Jesus made me/so Jesus save me/from pity, sympathy/and people discussing me.'

Truth be told I still love most of Moz's Smiths and solo stuff in a completely unironic way -- even the bits I know are ridiculous. But his videos have always been pretty awful. Check out this one for the terrific "Last of the Famous International Playboys":

His new stuff's pretty great -- I somehow feel he's grown into himself and makes a great cranky old guy. He's gotten rid of the mesh shirts and bought some great suits, for one thing. He's still not making great videos, though. Check out this pretty average clip for the pretty great song "Irish Blood/English Heart":

Still terrific live, though. Check out this concert montage built around one of my favorites,"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out":

Looks like Christian Bale is going to follow up the next Batman movie with the fourth Terminator film, in which he'll play John Connor.

I should be excited about this -- I generally trust Bale to make good acting decisions (yeah, yeah -- there was Newsies...but, you know...now). But a Terminator movie that doesn't star Arnold, directed by the Charlie's Angels guy? I dunno...

It looks like Terry ("Hulk") Hogan and his wife Linda are headed for divorce.

The couple's family star in the VH1 Reality TV show "Hogan Knows Best" - and so some, citing Nick and Jessica and Britney and Kevin, are saying the reality TV curse has struck again.

It seems like a good point -- the couple's son is also facing felony charges in a drag racing incident, so maybe TV really does destroy everything it touches.

But when you look at how many celebrity couples get divorced, factor in that about half of American marriages fail even if no one is famous, and then think about the extra pressures fame can put on a marriage, maybe it's amazing any stars are married.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, rapper Jay-Z refused to discuss his relationship with pop star Beyonce at all. He said it's hard enough to have a relationship with both of your families involved -- having millions of people you don't know involved as well is just ridiculous.

He may have a point.

Sad news on E Street -- The Boss' keyboardist, Danny Federici, has been diagnosed with cancer.

He's leaving the current tour to seek treatment but Bruce says he hopes to have him well and back on the road soon.

Danny's been playing with Bruce for 40 years. Here's a picture of the two together in an early, pre-E Street band called "Child."

Bruce may be down one keyboardist for now, but he's on the cover of the current issue of Spin with Win Butler, lead singer of Arcade Fire.

Here's some YouTube footage of The Boss doing Arcade Fire's "Keep The Car Running" with Win and his wife, Regine, and a duet on his own "State Trooper" as well.

Empire Magazine has an exclusive interview with Heath Ledger about playing The Joker.

According to the magazine the role involved Ledger "marinading himself in nothing but Joker before shooting."

Ewww...

My favorite news story of the day:

A British man convicted of being a serial flasher says he couldn't be guilty -- because his genitals are so small, he'd never expose them in public.

From the story:

"During the three-day trial the defendant told the court: "It causes embarrassment to myself, even to the point where it is with my wife. I wouldn't want myself to be seen in public like that.

He showed the jury photographs taken by his wife to prove his claims. "

That's when you know your back's to the wall -- you either go to jail or tell a judge (and the world) that your penis is so small there's no way you'd reveal it in public, for any reason.

Conan O'Brien has pledged to begin paying his non-writing, non-striking staff members out of his pocket while the writer's strike continues.

The non-writing staff face being laid off by NBC next week if the strike isn't settled -- all 75 of them. So O'Brien, who is a member of the striking Writer's Guild of America, is shelling out the money himself while his show is on hiatus.

Apparently the staffs for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson have been promised the same deal by Letterman, whose production company owns both shows.

I was wondering what was going to happen to those staffers during the strike.

A White Stripes video is always worth checking out. I think their earlier ones were more interesting, though they've stayed pretty strange throughout.